Doing Something Different- Giving up.

Change is not a bad thing. Change can be exceptionally good, especially if you are spiraling down a path that is causing you to lose focus. Several times throughout the course of my life, especially recently, it has been made prevalent to me that change has to happen, no excuses. This year, I have been stagnant in some areas of my life where I needed to be the most proactive. Not only that, but I have let the worst parts of social media determine how I see my own life, and occasionally wincing at the posts indicating that those around me have lives less complicated than my own. The deception is that people will give a true “status” of their lives with “no filter” on social media when in reality, our pride keeps up from giving up every part of ourselves, especially in the public arena. We don’t want people to judge. And in the face of Christianity, we put on a front and would rather talk about the big issues through a screen and not face to face. These are issues that nobody wants to outright address because we have been blinded to the reality of the situation at hand- that we are all suffering in different ways. This world is suffering as a whole. And if we are not suffering in some way then something is wrong. There will always be hard times, physically, spiritually, emotionally and so forth.

Even the most pure thing can be distorted on social media. For example, bible verses can be used to make one seem like they have been in the word constantly, when all they could have done was pull that verse from google, which gets rid of the need for “quiet time justification” in the eyes of fellow Christians on social media. Inspirational verses can be put up, not because the isolated verse actually applies to the person at that particular time, but because with the verse itself comes the many Facebook likes and comments. After all, what Christian wouldn’t like anything that comes from the bible? That might sound harsh but it is meant to prove a point. Any good thing can be fraudulent for our pride or our need to pretend.

So to say all of that is to say that I would like to try something different. As of a week ago. I have chosen to give up Facebook. Facebook will not be deactivated and I will still browse occasionally. My goal for this is to get rid of the obsession to put on a front, to only show my best side. By doing what I’ve been doing on places such as Facebook, Instagram and snap-chat would be lying to my friends and to myself. I am refraining from posting anything to the sites just listed. I do not know how long I plan to do this, but I will say that I will do this for as long as it takes for me to see change in myself and in my media tendencies. This blog will be my main “outlet”, as I am less likely to fabricate my circumstances for the sake of pleasing the public; it is exhausting trying to put on an act 24/7. The hope is that I will be less dependent of Facebook’s ability to make the world less “scary”- the world is a terrifying place to live in, and coming to grips with this fact is the first step in my opinion to help make a difference to change it. I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.